Shan’s Blog

As US stock drop, the country’s key stock market index has opened lower by 500 points in highly volatile trading and Nifty is down by 150 points, investors offloaded holdings ahead of Union Budget.

The market, which has been flirting with negative terrain over the last seven trading sesasions, plunged by 170.69 points at 13,478.83 as the pre-Budget Economic Survey, tabled in Parliament on Tuesday, noted that inflation was a genuine concern.

The market remained volatile as the index shot up to 13,703.41 and touched a low of 13,408.56.

The wide-based National Stock Exchange index Nifty also lost 57.45 points at 3884.55. It moved between 3,958 and 3,873.85 points.

The report had also taken cognisance of the buoyancy in the equity market, which had helped raise Indian stocks’ market capitalisation to 91.5 per cent of GDP. The Indian market was the second most valued among emerging markets after Indonesia.

The Survey by the Finance Ministry had also noted that volatility in the domestic markets was higher than global markets.

Market participants were seen unloading part of their holdings ahead of budget and weakening overseas markets influenced the trading sentiment to some extent.